Out for Blood

This is the disturbing account of 31-year-old Joanna Dennehy, mother of two, the man under her spell, Gary Stretch, 47, and the murder investigation that led them and others to the Old Bailey for trial. A true crime short, plus 17 additional true crime stories. 

It was the day before Easter, 2013. A man out walking his dog on a rural road near Peterborough, United Kingdom found a dead body lying in a ditch. The grisly discovery preceded two other dead body discoveries under similar circumstances, thus launching police on a massive country-wide manhunt for a self-mutilating female psychopath with an affinity for knives and her 7-foot 3-inch tall companion and accomplice. Before their bloody rampage was brought to an end, they would attempt to kill two additional innocent people who likely never even saw them coming. 

This volume also includes the bizarre, compelling and frighteningly authentic true crime stories of several headline-grabbing cases, as well as more obscure cases that received little media attention. Within these pages you will find stories about serial killer Andrew Urdiales; Jodi Arias and the murder of Travis Alexander; the random serial stabber case; a killer who wanted to be like Dexter; a blood oath murder case out of Washington State; a story about a dead man who murdered two female victims; the case of Portland's Motel Hell bloodbath; and several other real-life true crime dramas chosen especially for true crime aficionados about killers who mostly had one thing in common—they were OUT FOR BLOOD! 18 stories in all. Photos.

OUT FOR BLOOD

18 Authentic True Crime Stories of Murder and Mayhem

Gary C. King

© Copyright Bleak House Publishing, Inc. and Gary C. King Enterprises, Inc. 2016.

Cover image copyright Lario Tus. Used under license from Shutterstock.com.

Books written by Gary C. King can be obtained either through the author’s official website, http://www.garycking.com or through your favorite online book retailers.

Fictitious names were used for some individuals in this book because there is no reason for public interest in their true identities.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Many have postulated that the killings outlined in this story were perpetrated by a spree killer as opposed to the actions of a serial killer. I chose to classify the killings in this case as those having been committed by a serial killer, a decision I arrived at simply by using the FBI’s latest definition of serial murder, hammered out by teams of experts at a 2005 symposium on the subject. These teams of experts came up with the following definition: Serial Murder—The unlawful killing of two or more victims by the same offender(s), in separate events. Noting that confusion sometimes occurs by using the separate term of spree killer also prompted symposium attendees ending up advocating that use of the term as a separate category of homicide should be disregarded because the designation does not provide any real benefit for use by law enforcement, according to a paper released by the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI. Similarly, the crimes committed in this case cannot be classified as mass murder, either, because some of the crimes occurred on different days and in different locales. Therefore, this is a serial murder case, plain but not necessarily simple, and shall be referred to as such hereafter. What I found particularly strange about this case is that the killer knew all the victims that were murdered, sharply contrasting with the fact that most serial killers choose victims that are not known to him or her, thus making it more difficult for investigators to make a connection between the killer and the victims and often makes apprehension all the more difficult.

I’m bringing all this up here because, initially, soon after the suspects in this case were apprehended, there were suggestions that the crimes and perpetrators, particularly the primary culprit, somehow did not fit the bill for a serial killer. As stated above, I beg to differ. Quick apprehension, mostly because of the suspects’ own callous and brazen actions, committed with little or no forethought to the consequences of their crimes, prevented many other assaults and/or deaths that likely would have been perpetrated by them. If they hadn’t been caught, there most certainly would have been additional attacks and/or deaths attributed to Joanna Dennehy and company, possibly resulting in the usual cooling off period of a serial killer, leaving no doubt about how to classify them. Although having connections between the killer and the victims in this case made it easier for police to identify and apprehend a suspect, the suspect still was nothing less than a serial murderer. Yet, because there was no so-called cooling off period as there is with a more typical serial killer, criminologists nonetheless seem to prefer to refer to Dennehy as a spree killer.

Dennehy, it should be noted, was clearly acting out by committing violent crimes for reasons that perhaps even she was unaware. It has been postulated that perhaps there was no typical cooling off period between her crimes because she relished the attention being afforded her once the killings were discovered. She made it a point to tell a witness at one point: I want to murder men. I want to be a serial killer, write a book and be famous. It was even suggested at one point that perhaps she committed the acts of violence because she resented her parents for having a second child and wanted to get back at them through the attention she knew her abnormal acts would bring to her and her family.

Furthermore, it is interesting to note that detectives and other criminalists, at least in modern times, have long known that the phenomenon of serial murder is not limited by race, gender, or geography. This story, which I’m calling Out for Blood, took place in the United Kingdom, is but one such example, and adds yet another female serial killer to the annals of crime history.

Besides Out for Blood, this offering includes seventeen additional bizarre detective stories written especially for true crime aficionados.

GCK

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Author’s Note

Out for Blood

Did the Victim Have Her Killer’s Hair in Her Hand?

The Mother-Daughter Killings

Kill and Kill Again—Serial Killer Andrew Urdiales

The Killer’s Prayer for Forgiveness is What Nailed Him

Speed Freak Killer Paroled!

United Kingdom’s Case of the Playboy Killer

A Dead Man Murdered Two Victims?

The Killer Who Wanted to be Like Dexter

Washington’s Case of the Blood Oath Murder

Jodi Arias and the Murder of Travis Alexander

Mystery Motive of the Random Serial Stabber

The Little Girl and the Lusting Brute

The Car was Full of Dead People

Siblings Who Slay Together, Stay Together

Nude Dancers to His Brutal Slaying

I Strangled Him…Now I’m a Child Killer

Motel Hell Bloodbath

Accolades for Gary C. King

Also by Gary C. King

About the Author

Connect with Gary C. King Online

OUT FOR BLOOD

Peterborough, located in the eastern part of the United Kingdom approximately 86 miles due north of London, has a population of 214,000 making it the largest city in Cambridgeshire and the country’s 27th largest metropolitan area. Given its demographics, particularly the population, Peterborough is no stranger to violent crime, including murder. In fact, according to the city’s own police statistics, it is not unusual to see 200 violent crimes per month there, including stabbings. One of those crimes was discovered on Saturday morning, March 30, 2013. Although the crime did not appear to have taken place in Peterborough proper, it would be at first investigated by the police in that jurisdiction and would lead them into the green countryside near Newborough.

The incident that launched the investigation was simple enough. A man was out walking his dog that morning in a rural area near the A16 motorway when his dog picked up the scent of something in the air and began leading the man away from the road. He followed his dog’s lead for several yards and soon saw something frightening familiar lying face down in a water-filled ditch next to the road. At first he thought the object may have been a mannequin that someone had discarded—it seemed plausible because it wore a black sequin dress, like something one would see on a mannequin on display in a store window. When he approached it he could see that the human-like form resembled the body of a man, no longer the mannequin he had first thought he’d seen. Someone had pulled his pants down, exposing his buttocks, and from the dog walker’s vantage point it looked like the dress covered his other gender-appropriate male clothing. Because the presumed corpse lay completely still and did not respond when called out to, and because closer examination revealed what appeared to be blood on the man’s sleeves, the passerby believed the man was indeed dead. He hurried on home and called the local police to report his unnerving discovery.

I never would have found it if it weren’t for my dog, the man said later, to a reporter for a local newspaper, Peterborough Today. You couldn’t see the body from the road. The location is very isolated. Only dog walkers like myself ever come up here. I’ve lived in Newborough for over thirty years but never seen anything like this before.

The man described his unnerving discovery as a big shock, and said that the discovery of the body had quickly become the talk of the village.

When police and crime scene investigators arrived, they confirmed the dog walker’s findings—it was a dead man alright, and it appeared someone had stabbed him, police said. The homicide victim was soon identified as Kevin Lee, 48, a property owner and developer. A postmortem examination later confirmed investigators’ initial suspicions by determining cause of death as many stab wounds to the chest, and an accelerant believed to have been gasoline had been poured on his body, an obvious effort to try and cover up the crime. The unusual circumstances prompted detectives to treat Lee’s death as a homicide and to launch an investigation under the direction of Detective Chief Inspector Martin Brunning and the Bedfordshire, Cambridge and Herfordshire Major Crime Unit, as it would become known. Although they had no way of knowing it yet, two other murders would soon be added to the cops’ investigative plates, launching one of the biggest murder investigations the city has ever seen. Brunning would end up naming the investigation Operation Darcy.

As they considered the particulars of the case at its outset, DCI Brunning and his team noted that a report had come in about a burned-out car that a policeman had found not far away the night before, just up the road a bit from where Lee’s body was discovered. Brunning considered that the car might be linked to his homicide case, but did not know for certain at this point. He also theorized that the fact that someone had pulled down Lee’s pants, exposing his buttocks, likely perpetrated by his killer, was done as a form of after-death humiliation. However, Brunning and his team did not know where, when or why he had been slain. All they knew at this point was that they had an obvious homicide victim on their hands, killed by someone who must have really had it in for the victim to have been killed with such unleashed savagery and then so callously humiliated after death.

* * *

Official inquiries revealed that Kevin Lee was last seen at 2 p.m. a day earlier, on Good Friday, March 29, 2013. When Brunning followed up on the report about the burnt-out car he learned that a policeman had discovered a metallic, light-blue Ford Mondeo Estate, a large family car/station wagon, at approximately 9 p.m. the night before the dog walker happened upon Lee’s body. It turned out that the car’s identification plates showed that it belonged to Lee. The car was found along Broad Drive, near a farm in Yaxley, just south of Peterborough. It was burnt-out, but not because of an accident. The experienced investigators saw that someone had deliberately set fire to it, likely by whoever had killed Lee, as there were no other indications. A burned mattress was also found at the scene. Detectives soon learned that someone had reported Lee missing at 10:40 p.m. that same night. DCI Brunning credited a Norfolk detective for providing the Operation Darcy team a critical missing link early in the investigation. The detective, according to Brunning, had been reviewing an issue at a gasoline station that led to an examination of CCTV footage that was ultimately connected to Lee’s burned vehicle. That bit of information, namely the car’s registration information naming Kevin Lee as its owner, was the absolute golden nugget, Brunning said.

According to Brunning, police treated Lee’s death as an isolated incident at that time. After all, there weren’t any other bodies in that vicinity, at least none of which they were aware. The fact that someone had gone to so much trouble to dispose of the body and the car in separate locations appeared a bit odd—especially when coupled with the dressing up of Lee’s body in female attire. Instinct hinted that this was going to be an unusual case. The logistics of it all seemed a bit odd, too. It seemed like a lot going on at one time, raising the possibility that more than one person might be involved. The fire of the burning car would have been visible to passersby, and it was hoped that witnesses would come forward with information. Brunning made a public appeal to anyone who may have been in the area where Lee’s body was discarded or where his car was found to contact police about what they may have seen. Brunning also wanted to know who may have seen the Mondeo Estate driven (by one or more people) in the Yaxley area on Good Friday, to contact his office.

We are in contact with the man’s family and will be keeping them up to date on our investigation, Brunning added in a statement to Sky News.

Lee was a married man and father from the nearby community of Fletton. His family, reeling in shock over his death, described him as a wonderful husband, father, loving brother and son.

Kevin Lee

In the aftermath of Lee’s death, police developed information that implicated Gary Stretch, 47, one of Britain’s tallest men at 7 feet 3 inches in height, in the case in that Stretch and Lee had known each other and that Stretch may have been someone with whom Lee had a rental agreement in a tenant-landlord relationship. Lee, they had learned, was a property owner and developer. Although much of the information about Stretch was not immediately released to the public, police believed he had been in the area with his tattooed girlfriend, Joanna Dennehy, 30, and that the couple may have still been in the area. Stretch, of course, would stand out like a sore thumb because of his enormous size, police stressed. Police had learned of a dispute of sorts over one of the rentals Lee owned. He had begun eviction proceedings against Stretch, who had clearly become a person of interest in the case early on, in part due to the property dispute.

Police described Stretch with grey balding hair. According to police, Dennehy donned a distinctive star-shaped green tattoo on her right cheek, just beneath her right eye. She sometimes referred to herself as Star, a nickname, presumably related to her choice of the green tattoo. Brunning said that both suspects were very recognizable, especially when together. Brunning also appealed to the couple directly, urging both to come in for questioning to see if either or both could shed some light on the case. Brunning also cautioned people to not approach either person of interest, but instead urged anyone to report sightings and locations to police. Brunning obviously had reason to believe the pair was somehow involved in the case, but he chose to keep most of the specifics private at this point to help ensure the integrity of the case.

Gary Richards, aka Gary Stretch, and Joanna Dennehy

Gary and Joanna are very distinctive in their appearance which is why I am asking the public for help, stated Brunning.

Brunning added that detectives wanted to speak with anyone with information about their whereabouts or who may have seen either person of interest since 2 p.m. on Good Friday, March 29. Although both persons of interest had resided in the Peterborough area, Brunning conceded that they could be anywhere in the country as police investigated the strange case.

Detective Chief Inspector Martin Brunning

I need to locate them as a matter of urgency, Brunning said. I would also make a direct plea to Joanna and Gary—please contact police as it is important we speak with you.

Because of the police urgency in wanting to find the distinctive duo, Stretch and Dennehy quickly took their place on the police department’s Most Wanted list, thus raising their status from persons of interest to that of suspects, and public pleas for information about their whereabouts were made on behalf of authorities through multiple media sources. However, their whereabouts remained unknown in the immediate aftermath of the discovery of Kevin Lee’s body.

* * *

On Easter Sunday, March 31, 2013, detectives arrested a 23-year-old man, who they did not name, and the following day, April 1, 2013, took a 32-year-old man and a 36-year-old man into custody on suspicion of involvement in Lee’s death. The police did not name any of the men in public documents at that time, nor did they detail their thoughts on the men’s suspected involvement in the unusual homicide case. They soon released the younger man on bail without comment. A short time later they released the 32-year-old man, and announced that no further action was to occur against him or the younger man. Because neither man faced any charges, detectives did not reveal the information that had initially led to them. Police later named the third man arrested in their probe, Leslie Layton, and lay a charge of perverting the course of justice. They continued holding him without commenting about the implication of the charges.

That same day, according to the Daily Mail, police went to a rental property where the landlord was none other than Kevin Lee. They knocked loudly on the door and a woman identified here as Janet Blake opened it. The police rushed past her and up the stairs where they knocked down the door of another of the house’s residents, Gary Stretch, who apparently moved around somewhat frequently. Stretch wasn’t there, of course, and the cops made a lot of noise as they searched the room and other parts of the house. The cops left after a considerable time, leaving Blake wondering what they had been looking for and whether they had found it.

The next day, Monday April 1, 2013, the police returned to Lee’s rental. This time they spoke to Blake and asked her if she had anywhere safe to go, trying to reassure her that there was no reason for her to be alarmed. One of the officers showed her a piece of paper, presumably found during their search of Stretch’s room, that displayed a list of seven names with the top three—Lucasz Slaboszewski, John Chapman, and Kevin Lee—already crossed off.

Blake saw that her name was fourth on the list as the cops explained to her that she was looking at Joanna’s hit list. When they wanted to know why Blake would end up on Joanna’s hit list, Blake told them that she’d had several serious altercations with Joanna shortly after meeting her—when Stretch had brought her to his room on one occasion right after moving into the house and shortly after having befriended Joanna.

Blake explained that she had attempted to introduce herself to Dennehy, and that Dennehy had responded by cursing at her in a noisy tirade. When Blake told her she was being rude, Dennehy told Blake that she didn’t want to know her. Dennehy reportedly ran toward Blake and tried to strangle her with her bare hands. When Blake grabbed a hammer and threatened to hit her with it, Joanna let go of her neck. Blake told police that she knew then that Joanna was bad news and opined that she was a psychopath out of control. Blake told police that Gary Stretch had seemed like Joanna’s lap dog who would do anything Joanna wanted. Blake also said that on their first meeting Joanna had told her that she’d just gotten out of prison after serving ten years for killing her father who, Joanna claimed falsely, had been abusing her.

It was all lies, even the prison sentence, Blake said, but she nonetheless went to stay at a friend’s house for her safety, just in case, and for the next two days she lived in fear, having panic attacks and unable to sleep.

* * *

On Tuesday, April 2, 2013, two more men became stabbing victims in broad daylight in a town a significant distance from the location where Kevin Lee’s body was found. Fortunately, neither of those attacks resulted in death, though their injuries were quite serious. Witnesses described three people, two men and a woman, driving around in a small car as if they were perhaps trolling the area looking for victims.

One of the victims, John Rogers, a 64-year-old man and retired public servant who had spent his life working as a fireman, had been stabbed on Villa Street, in Hereford, located approximately 142 miles southwest of Peterborough, a three-hour drive by car, and near England’s border with Wales as he walked his dog along a bicycle path. A passerby witnessed the violent exchange between a woman wielding a knife and the victim, and heard the woman say that she was going to fucking kill the man on the street. Rogers kicked at the woman and made contact at one point, but it seemed to have no effect on her. When the passerby approached, the woman climbed inside the small car and sped away with its driver and another passenger.

I said, ‘What are you doing?’ Rogers later recalled having said when he was attacked, having sustained multiple stab wounds. She said, ‘I’m hurting you. I’m going to fucking kill you.’

She just stared right through me, he continued. I kicked her and made contact. It had no impact on her. She just came straight towards me. I ran into the road. I put my hand to my jacket and saw all this blood.

She didn’t seem to be showing any emotion, Rogers said later in describing the attack on him by the then still-unknown female assailant. She didn’t seem to be enjoying herself. She just seemed like she was going about business. As I lay there I thought, ‘This is where I’m going to die.’ I turned around and saw the woman who stabbed me just standing there. She started stabbing me in the chest.

The second Hereford victim was a 56-year-old man, Robin Bereza, out walking his dog, too, like Rogers. Bereza was stabbed at first in the back, along Westfaling Street, north of Villa Street and just across the River Wye. He and his dog were walking along a bicycle path when the unprovoked attack occurred. When Bereza turned around to face the woman, he later recalled, she stabbed him again and said, ‘Oh, look. You’re bleeding. I’d better do some more.’ She plunged the knife into the man again and again, in the chest and in other places, as he screamed in agonizing pain. What’s this all about? Bereza had asked as he fell to the ground. She took Bereza’s dog and left Bereza for dead on the bicycle path.

The two stabbings were clearly attempted murders at this point, and occurred 10 minutes apart. Both attacks appeared random and occurred under the West Mercia Police Department’s jurisdiction.

One shocked resident told police that he’d seen a woman randomly stabbing and attacking people in the street, between 3:30 and 4 p.m. Another witness described a man seen with the woman as looking like the Incredible Hulk or Bigfoot.

This kind of stuff doesn’t happen around here, said one resident. Everybody is shocked.

Several elderly people expressed fear and concern over the apparently motiveless violence. Another resident, a teenage girl, told police that she had come downstairs from her apartment at 4:30 p.m. and had heard a car pull up, which she described as an Astra, a small compact-type vehicle.

Then the door slammed shut, she said. It pulled off really fast like someone was in a hurry. I looked out of the window and saw somebody hunched over and clutching their side as if they’d been punched or stabbed. It was a man with dark hair. I think they (the police) found someone up the top of the street. After that there were police helicopters in the sky for a while…it’s not something you expect to happen. All you normally see here are cars and kids going up to use the park.

From what I’ve been told there was a woman going around stabbing people and threatening them with a knife, a male teenager told reporters. It wasn’t a street fight or anything like that. She has just been going around picking people off to attack. It’s crazy.

Other witnesses also told police that at the times of the stabbings an Astra vehicle had pulled up to a victim, a woman jumped out and carried out the knife attacks, while a man waited inside the car and watched. Each time after committing the knifings the woman quickly reentered the car, leaving the victims for dead. Although both Hereford victims survived the brutal attacks, it had been a close call for the second victim, rushed to a hospital in critical condition with a punctured lung.

In the meantime, police Superintendent Ivan Powell, who headed the investigation in Hereford, tried to allay the growing fear among the area’s residents.

These appear to have been two separate, unprovoked assaults on members of the public, Powell said. We are continuing to investigate what took place in different locations on Tuesday afternoon…Forensic searches and house-to-house inquiries are ongoing.

Another police spokesperson said that a large police presence would remain in the area as the investigation continued, and as house-to-house inquiries and forensic searches were conducted. Powell also said that detectives had seized the suspect’s vehicle, discovered nearby, as part of their investigation, and had made several arrests, including Stretch and Dennehy. They had a huge workload on their hands, but most were confident that they could handle the additional work. Sir Graham Bright, Cambridgeshire police commissioner, echoed his confidence in all the police departments involved in the investigation.

These incidents are being investigated by the collaborated tri-force major crime unit, Bright said. "The benefit of a large, coordinated unit is that